It wasn’t in a Dodge Aries, I hope. Maybe the question should have been: Has anyone ever ridden in the front middle seat of a K-Kar? If you have, I offer my condolences. Per the original question, for me, it was in my Dad’s Taurus. It must have been for a short, quick hop somewhere in Towson. A lot of us needed to get in, so I took the least popular seat. In a strange sort of way, it proved theraputic, since my father could never bear to have someone sit next to him in the front seat–too much risk of skin contact, you see. In our ’62 Fairlane, four of us rode in the back seat and another took turns riding shotgun next to him. I felt vaguely guilty during my single turn up there on our three-day trip to New York, knowing that my pregnant mother sat in the back with my siblings, two older and one younger. Make that four-and-a-half back there.

You got me thinking here…I was about 15 or 16, with my parents and Grandparents, “Albert” and “Iris”. We were in my parents ’85 Crown Victoria going from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to Nashville, Tennessee,a trip of about 4 hours. I was stuck in the middle front.

My dad is 5’6″ and drove. Grandpa is 6’2″ and was riding shotgun. With the differences in seat adjustments, I, at 5’11”, was pretty much sitting sideways and getting a good look at grandpa’s profile. After numerous questions on why my younger sister wasn’t sitting here, my mom said it wasn’t too bad. I offered it to her. Accepting, she saw my point.

It is absolute Hell to be a relatively tall person sitting up front in a bench-seat car when a short person is driving. I once went for a ride with a co-worker who was about five feet zero, who wanted to show off her newly-purchased Dart Swinger with a bench seat.

The car was pretty nice, and the 340 made a fairly pleasant sound, but at five feet eleven, I was on intimate terms with the windshield, and could not get out of that car quickly enough. This was not a 50/50 bench, either; I was stuck with what worked for the driver. I can only attempt to imagine what the imposing Mr. Niedermeyer would have gone through, had he been in my place.

Quite rare to have a bench front seat on any car since 1980 The Taxi pack Falcon is the only thing that springs to mind and civilian versions of it, Last time would be as a kid in one of Dads 70s Holden Kingswoods

You could get a bench seat in a Holden Commodore until the mid-90’s, 1997 perhaps when the VT came out. Family friends with 4 kids had a 95-96 model.

The Falcon made it through to around 2000-2002, the passenger airbag was specially shaped to give protection to a middle seat occupant. They probably still are, as the utes are still available with a bench seat.

I am struggling to think of a time riding in the front middle seat of a sedan. The last time I can remember in the front middle seat would have been in my uncle’s 1983 Jeep Cherokee (aka Wagoneer in the USA) when we visited in say 1993 (3000mi from home), because the auto trans shifter was on the left hand side of the transmission tunnel and quite a stretch for the driver the centre passenger also had shifting duties!

Ditto in NZ re the Commodore bench – friends has a ’96 one with a bench. It was a wagon – come to think of it, I’ve only ever seen wagons here with front benches. Was the bench available in the sedan in Australia? Pretty sure we could still get a front bench for the BA and BF Falcon wagons too. I’ll have to dig the brochures out now and check!

I can remember riding in the front middle with my dad and brother in a 60 Corvair, I think the back seat was full of bales of hay. I can’t remember a time it was because there were 6 people in the car. That was over 10 years ago.

The only time I remember doing it long term was when we moved from Kansas to Delaware when I was about 7 or 8. It was in a 66 or 67 Buick Sportwagon purchased specifically for the trip. I remember I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t in the back, which was pretty full, since I thought it was soo cool that we finally had a wagon with the windows in the roof like my cousin’s family’s Vista Cruiser.

I do remember trips with my cousins where the 4 of us and often our grandmother would be stuck in the back of my aunt and uncles Delta 88 while my Aunt and Uncle rode up front alone.

I had a 1997 Lincoln Continental with a front bench seat when I was college. Pearl white, it was the perfect incognito ride. I once rode in the front middle while my girlfriend served as the designated driver. Got 4 people comfortably in back seat. With tinted windows and the air ride to keep it all level, no one knew it was transporting 7 kids around.

Maybe you saw the news, the 2013 Impala is the last American car to offer a bench front seat, optional not standard, and in 2014 it’s gone. Ford bench seats ended with the Crown Vic, and Chrysler’s with the Concorde.

This family size chart tells the tale. It starts in the thirties, right when the column shift appeared, opening up that middle seat. Over 70% of Americans said they thought three or more kids was ideal. Bucket seats appeared in the 1960s (so did The Pill), and look how fast the “ideal family” shrank.

My last time riding front-center was in 1991, I think, in my grandfather’s ’88 Sedan deVille. We loaded the family in it to go to Sunday brunch. I had just turned 16; a few months later I’d drive that car to my junior prom.

I can’t remember the last time, but definitely the worst time was a situation just like Jason Shafer’s above. It was in a ’51 or ’52 Chevy sedan, from Des Moines, Iowa, to Minneapolis. Mick, the 5′ 6″ owner drove, Paul, another six-footer rode shotgun, and I got the center seat. Shoulda been in back with the girls….

I suppose you all know that the reason cowboy hat brims are turned up at the sides is so that three cowboys can ride in a pickup.

The last time was in 1983. A GF invited me to a Gateway Clipper dinner cruise. Two other couples she knew were going. I had my freshly polished 66 Deville convertible at her house, only to find that we were all going in one of the other guy’s 80 T-Bird. (a romantic evening it wasn’t). I sat in the front middle (6’3″ tall) with the driver and my GF. The 40 minute ride into Pittsburgh was miserable, and so was the entire evening. My GF’s cousin kept a sing-song going.

The 3 couples all ended up married to each other. What a miserable night, though.

I’ve done it with my ’76 Monte Carlo, which is a split bench (6-way power drivers/reclining passenger seat arrangement with no center armrest). I agreed to it reluctantly when 6 people begged to ride together to a drive-in movie event. I was driving, not riding, but it was definitely cramped! I think we did it a couple of times when I had my ’72 Olds 98 Regency. Better in that huge car, but also not ideal because that car also had fancy 60/40 seats. My current ’79 Toronado would be perfect for it because of its perfectly flat floor, but I don’t think that car even has center seatbelts (I could be wrong, must check and see!)

The trick is to be the owner of the bench seat car, so that you get to drive and let other people have that miserable front middle seat. It seems like I rode front middle a lot as a kid. I am sure I have done so more recently, but the last one I really remember was accompanying a friend and his family on a six hour drive to northern Michigan in their 71 Travelall. The T-all was pretty wide and there was a lot of room under the dash, so it was probably as good of a middle-front experience as it was possible to have. Soon after, they traded the Binder on a Dodge van which was a lot better vacation vehicle. The van was a good tradeoff – it got rid of the front middle seat that nobody wanted to sit in anyhow.

Later, I recall a trip from Indiana to Philadelphia with my Dad and Stepmom and 3 other kids. Dad had a 72 Mark IV and knew a guy with a 74 Continental Town Car. They swapped for the trip. The two little kids (at least one in an early car seat) got the two middle seats, and my sister and I (the two oldest) got the two outboard back seats. However, I think I recall some small suitcases on the floor so even then it was not exactly limo-style comfort. This is probably the experience behind my years-long ownership of a Club Wagon.

Yeah the Travelall has likely the most roomiest front middle seat of any vehicle. Full size truck width and since the body sits on top of the frame, instead down in it like the last BOF cars the transmission hump is relatively small. My Travelall has the bucket/console/fold down arm rest seat though so no seat belts for a middle passenger. For the 73 they started embossing “not a seat” in the lid of the console to further discourage it’s use as a seat since with the arm rest up it certainly looks like a seat.

Yes, once in a K-car (’81 Dodge Aries 2-door) with a stick shift, but done as a little kid (maybe 1983 or so). I would not recommend it with the stick in the way. That was the last car we had with a front bench seat.

The last time I rode in the middle of the front seat was in the summer of 1980, the year my sister got married and thus vey shortly before I got my licence. Dad and I went to CFB Comox to fetch two sets of aunts and uncles, both uncles being air force NCOs. It was about 200 km each way, so not a short drive.

The real rub was it was not truly a bench since it was a split seat with a silly little arm rest per section. Sitting on that was not very nice at all, especially between two big, strapping Irish brothers. On that trip, I must have inhaled enough second hand smoke to give an elephant cancer.

On the way back, dad booted it and got a speeding ticket. His 350 cid F-41 Impala was quite a road car for its day.

I think the final straw in killing off the front bench seat was the difficulty in fitting a lap-sash seat belt. When Ford introduced passenger airbags in the Falcon they were shaped to provide some protection for the middle passenger, a seat-mounted belt is theoretically possible but more difficult on a quasi ‘folding armrest’.

On the other hand the Falcon ute is still available with a bench seat (60/40) with a centre lap-sash belt mounted on the rear wall of the cab. Presumably full-size pickups are available with bench seats in crew cab – do they have just a lap belt or a full lap-sash?

Last car that I was in with middle bench position being used was 91 Taurus .
Last car where I was the middle shotgun position…? I’m not positive ,but think it was a 58 Plymouth Suburban wagon. Coming from a family of eight in pre -seatbelt usage days I think everyone in our family took that spot at one time or another.

I haven’t, but my 22 y/o son rode on it last year’s Halloween. It was a long 2.5 hour trip to Camargo, 210 kilometres south of the city of Chihuahua, and we were six on board my 1991 Cadillac Sedan deVille. I thought it would be fun to go together in this car and later, when we came back to Chihuahua, my son told me he wanted to change seat with someone else, which he did, and the other party later said that he was happy at the beginning, but frustated at the end, because the middle front seat was terrible to bear.

Wow, you guys are all old timers with newer vehicles, none of which seem to be a third or fourth gen Taurus/Sable. All of the column shift models had a seat in the front.

2009. My friends and I are drunk as hell, and did not want to take the bus back to our apartment. My friends brother was on his way into Albany, and wanted to pick us all up in his tiny Cavalier. I told him to get the keys to my Sable, as it was the only car out of our group that could hold a bunch of drunken college students.

So he arrives, I get the front middle seat, and the Sable shuttles about eight of us back to the apartment, albeit under much stress. Luckily it was only about three miles, so I think the car was fine.

I was assigned a ’00 Taurus with the flex-fuel engine. At an overnight work function, I drove a group of people to dinner. The two gentlemen in the back seat had always eaten well and missed no meals. A third gentleman of more modest dimensions was caught in the middle back between them. As soon as we took off, I realized the rear suspension was bottomed out from the load. It was a pretty rough ride for a brief while.

That car has the CD changer mounted in the trunk next to the actual radio. I’ve seen lots of them with the buckets, console and column shift. I can’t say I’ve seen very many of the final gen with the console/seat/armrest they touted so heavily when the bubble generation was released.

My family had a 1982 Aries for a short time, and I remember us packing a lot of family in it while visiting family in Tennessee. No doubt I was in the front middle. The poor 2.2l engine barely got us over the mountain we had to climb but we somehow made it.

Years later when we were living in Florida we had family come down from Michigan. Dad wanted us to all go to some restaurant on the other side of Leesburg, which was quite a ways away. He decided to pack us all into my 1985 Skylark. Keep in mind that GM placed a little console in the center of the bench seat to make the car a five-passenger. Well, by stuffing a small pillow in the console, I ended up spending that evening riding there. It was tight, but we made it.

The last car (not including some trucks) we had made for six was mom and dad’s 2000 Taurus SEL. One time my friend and I were leaving church and for some reason he had some young-ish kids that he was responsible for getting home, and we packed them in the Taurus. We all fit just fine.

Looking back I do remember packing three across in my Cutlass Supreme Brougham. Oddly enough, the center spot was purposely chosen by a friend, I said well, whatever!

Lastly, I remember having to make a trip from Inverness, FL to Orlando in a 1989 Crown Victoria LX while sitting in the front middle, between the church pianist (who owned the car) and my pastor. The car was plush and rode wonderfully, but the seats were NOT lined up, so it was awkward at best. Thankfully the other half of that ride I got to ride in the back seat!

I will say one thing about cars with bench seats, if they have a fold down armrest, they always fit me better than the armrests that come with center console cars. It seems that the armrests in those cars are designed to be used by people way taller than me, and have the seats shoved way back.

Both my 1966 Catalina and my 1984 Century Olympic Edition had bench seats, and I remember them fondly. One thing I always liked about a bench seat is that the driver could get in and out of the car via the passenger-side door if necessary. As for riding in the middle in a bench seat? Pretty much every time I ever rode in a pickup truck with two other people!

I rode in the middle seat of my 98′ Taurus after I lost my contacts at a wild party, and therefore, had to have someone else drive. This was 2008 I think. My younger brother crashed it into a tree not too long afterward, so that was the end of bench seats for me.

The last time that I rode in the front middle “position” was in my parents’ 1967 Pontiac Paresiene 2+2 convertible. Despite the fact that my father had been totally blinded in the second world war, he always got to occupy the front passenger seat. This led to some family conflict with the family wheelperson, my mother. I would advise her that she could station my dad in the back seat and he would be just as content but she would hear nothing. In response, both I and my younger brother, on a trip from Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) to Nova Scotia, would sit on the console to get a veiw up the road that was unavailable from the back seat of a top up convertible. For some reason, my younger brother was unable to restrain his forward momentum at times and would push the gear lever into neutral on steep decents common in New Brunswick at the time. My mother would be flumoxed when, on the subsequent hill ascent, the engine would scream and the car would slow. I think that my brother got a good smack for that one. As an aside, I must, having mentioned her, give my props to my mother. In about 1962, she put in a one day drive, with a blind man beside her and three kids in the back seat, driving a 1960 Monarch Lucerne to a one day distance record that it took me to the 1990’s to eclipse. It was just over 950 miles.

Well, in the early-mid 1980’s, I often rode in the middle of our 1981 Reliant – in the back seat. Wifey drove, mom rode shotgun and I rode in the back with our kids – me in the middle, and we goofed off all the way home. We used to do that quite often when we went to the mall on Friday evenings – then we had to hurry home so wifey and I could get the kids to bed so we could watch “Dallas”!

Our Reliant was a two-door, too!

Other than that, the last time I rode three in front with me in the middle was in the 1970s before I got married. A buddy would come to my house to visit, me and my friend up the street would pile in his short-bed fleetside Chevy Cheyenne pickup and run off somewhere.

That was fun until my friend riding shotgun bent down on the premise of “tying his shoe”…thing was, he never sat back up, leaving me right snug alongside my friend driving.

You guessed it…we looked like two guys who were…ahem…”overly friendly”…

My buddy riding shotgun eventually straightened up after a merciless pounding by me. That happened all the time, but we sure got lots of laughs out of it!

for me, I think it was 3 years ago when I sat in the middle of a manual transmissioned red later model Ranger with the standard bench, but it was not a long ride, but from the nearby bar home.

Needless to say, I had to straddle the gear shift!

However, when on an outing with family, the last time would have been in the mid 70’s when all three sibs were still at home, by the second half of the decade it was me and my youngest sister, when she was home so no need to ride in the front center and by 83, the cars with bench began to diminish around our house as most cars we had up until then were non split bench seated up front, and that included the ’72 Gold Duster. The Vega, the 76 Accord, and the 68 MGB-GT were obviously of buckets up front.

By 1983, more of our cars had either buckets, or that pseudo bench seat with the center console thingy (GM X body Citation/Skylark), perhaps the 95 Chrysler Concorde and the 78 Ford Fairmont that all were owned by my parents

My last car with bench seats was the Ranger, though it was a split 60/40 unit but I placed a plastic console like unit where the armrest would drop down to hold stuff like drinks when need be.

My first 4 cars had bench seats, the 68 Newport, the 74 and 78 Chevy Novas all had bench seats as did the 78 Fairmont that was once Dad’s.

The last 6 passenger car that my wife and I had was her ’97 Lesabre. Her dad, a long-time Buick/Olds dealer, would get her and her sister any car they wanted, as long as it was a well-used Lesabre.

The last time I rode in the middle front was in 2008 when we were in Cleveland for a wedding. Six of us piled into the car, all drunk but her, with me squeezed into the middle next to her. None of us were from Cleveland, so when the freeway we were supposed to take home was closed, we were completely screwed. A friend in the back was trying to give her directions from his equally clueless Blackberry, with the rest of us yelling, laughing and generally contradicting the Blackberry’s directions. We eventually made it back to the hotel, with her exclaiming that she was retiring from DD duty for a while.

Despite the fact that I was a kid in the late 80’s and 90’s, automotively I grew up in the 1970’s. We always had old cars. I remember riding in the middle in my dad’s ’66 galaxie and my grandmother’s ’78 LTD (oh how I hated being picked up in that ugly green barge with wheels!)
I also used to ride in the middle of my other grandmother’s LeSabre between her and my grandfather.
As far as the last time that happened? It’s been a while. I’ve crammed in the middle of the front bench of a pickup truck recently but it’s been quite some time since it’s been in a car.

The newest passenger car with a front bench seat i can remember was the ’66 Olds Toronado. It had a flat floor and wide slippery white vinyl bench, Probably as nice a middle seat ride as you could have, maybe better than the Travelall.

The worst was not really a car, but a ’69 Dodge A-108 Sportsman “wagon”. Someone was often riding on top of the engine lid with no backrest or seatbelt, looking straight at the steel bar that separated the 1940’s style split windshield.

Never. I was born in 1973, and all the cars in the extended family then and since have had buckets in the front. I’ve only been in four vehicles with bench front seats, and all in the mid-80s – an HQ Holden Belmont, two HQ Kingswoods, and an XB Ford Falcon. I only ever rode in the back of the HQs, but did sit in the middle front of the Falcon once – it had no back seat as it was a ute, so only kind of counts. Maybe our lack of bench front seats was related to our mostly British-sourced cars in the 50s/60s/70s. Even our old Morris Minor had bucket seats. The few US-sourced RHD cars had front benches though, as did the bulk of the ‘Big 3’ Australians, the Holden Kingswood/Ford Falcon/Chrysler Valiant. The Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon continued to offer front benches as options until not so long ago, and you can still get a bench seat in the current Ford Falcon ute if so desired.

Quite a few of the British family cars had bench seats, usually accompanied by six microscopic people in the advertising illustrations. Like my mate’s Hillman Minx – 1540mm (5′ 3/4″) wide, but it has a bench seat!

Even on my two short trips to the states, all the cars I rode in had “proper” seats up front. I don’t recall encountering a front bench in Australia either, the oldest car I rode in there was an ’87 Falcon, but I’m pretty sure it had grown-up front seats too.

Closest I can get is rental vans – I’m quite wee so when friends are moving house/clearing out junk/splurging at IKEA and renting a van, it tends to be me who ends up in the middle (unless I’m driving) making the last middle front seat I rode in that of a VW Transporter mid August this year.

I think the only times I have ridden in the middle of a front bench seat was in a pickup truck. My immediate family last owned a car with a front bench seat in 1969 and on the rare occasions since then I usually got an outer seat since there was always somebody shorter to take the middle.

Well, I was blessed by being the eldest, so it was always my kid brother who got the front middle whenever we took our grandparents out. I always got the middle rear, which was good. He became something of a connoisseur of front middle seats.

Like many above, we had a K car- a ’83 Aries Custom wagon- the one with the fuzzy velour seats. My brother said the Aries was better than the Taurus, because the Taurus had a 50/50 split bench, and my parents always adjusted it differently, so he was riding at an angle all the time. Luckily by that time, the ’87 Taurus had the rear facing seats, and we both preferred to ride in the way-back even though that seat was probably scrunchier than either front seat.

Later, I have had the pleasure of not riding in the middle seat- but back when I lived in New Orleans, I used to have a ’96 Dakota with the five speed. I had to take my rather robustly built- think 250lbs carless neighbours and their daughter from the other side of our double shotgun in Bywater, New Orleans to the ‘good’ grocery store in Metarie.
Since their daughter was in a child seat, the husband rode in the back, and his equally substantial wife rode in the middle of said Dakota. Now, the 4 cylinder 2.5 Jeep engine is one of the best small truck engines ever, but it isn’t really a torque monster. As such, it rather struggled as I had to climb the I-10 ramp at Claiborne using only 1st, 3rd, and 5th gear- since 2nd and 4th were effectively blocked. Upon arrival, their daughter followed in the footsteps of my brother, and proceeded to do her best impression of Linda Blair. Afterwards, I wanted to thank Chrysler for making the Dakota Work-Special with a rubber mat instead of carpet.
I also wonder why car manufacturers don’t put rubber mats and vinyl seats in ‘family’ cars- at least in the rear. Carpet and velour are only luxurious until they are sullied by the stomach contents of one’s kid brother or some other child.

Oh Jeez, you are right about the lack of vinyl in family vehicle interiors. For years I had a Ford Club Wagon with the full Chateau package. Upholstery and carpet as far as the eye could see. I also had three little kids, the middle one being the family barfer (I thought about re-naming him Ralph). I lost count of the number of times I scrubbed the fabrics and carpets in that van, every time vowing to trade it in on something with vinyl bench seats and rubber-matted floors that I could hose out. By the time I finally got rid of the big Clubber, the kids had gotten old enough that their car-barfing days were over.

This article got me thinking way back to one of my earliest childhood memories. My parents had a 1953 Ponitac Chieftain Deluxe and I rode in what might be loosely described as a child car seat that was hung over the back of the middle of the front seat. You rode forward in this seat, which had a cool steering wheel (with horn button) and gearshift with which to play. I spent hours in this seat, mimicking my dad’s every turn of the wheel and shift of the Hydra-matic selector. I shudder to think what would have become of me in any front end collision over 15 mph, but it was a different time.

I have similar memories of sitting between my parents in Dad’s company car – a white 63 Bel Air wagon with red interior. I was young enough that when I volunteered to turn down the radio, I guessed wrong on which direction to turn the knob, resulting in a fast deterioration in my father’s mood. 🙂

In the early to mid 80’s I had a 9 passenger VW type 2 (bus) which had a font bench seat. Without having to allocate space for a walk-thru, they stored the spare tire under the bench seat, leaving more cargo space behind.

Living in Redmond, WA and working at (alternately) the Boeing D.C. and Kent Space Center, I ran a series of van pools, seating three across the front seat about half of the time. Steering was pretty heavy with 9 souls aboard.